It’s a happy birthday to Eliza Dushku, who turns 28 today, and looks every bit as striking as when snapped by Dominick Guillemot in the above photo session for Maxim in 2001. Dushku recently got to exercise her untapped artistic side in Nobel Son, her second film with writer-director Randall Miller, but it’s her new small screen collaboration with Buffy the Vampire creator Joss Whedon, Dollhouse, that has genre fans foaming at the mouth with anticipation.

Says Dushku of the action-intensive series, a February replacement on Fox which finds her playing multiple characters: “It’s perfect for me, because I have three older brothers and our whole family pretty much has ADHD. I’ve always been go-with-it, so it’s much better for me than wearing the same lab coat every day. We’re also really trying to get Fox to approve a story about boy soldiers in Liberia, even though we don’t know how we’re going to shoot that.” Here Dushku pauses, and laughs. “Fox finds it a bit disturbing and racy, but we’re pushing for it.”